The Role Of The Nurse In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

In the novel One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, written by Ken Kesey, tells the story of a group of patients in a mental hospital. The patients in the hospital all live under the authority of one nurse, Nurse Ratched. Nurse Ratched’s military, totalitarian leadership of the mental hospital combined with the fact that she tries to keep the healable patients under her control makes her the villain in this novel.
Nurse Ratched used to work as a nurse in the military, indicating she would act tough and keep everything well ordered like anything in the military, but when running a mental hospital the caretakers have to act extremely kind. Unfortunately, Nurse Ratched shows no mercy and she acts the same way with the mental patients as she would have in the military. This means everything must go exactly her way and nothing goes without a consequence. Broaden, the narrator describes her by saying, “The Big Nurse tends to get real put out if something keeps her outfit from running like a smooth, accurate, precision-made machine. The slightest thing messy or out of kilter or in the way ties her into a little white knot of tight-smiled fury. She walks around with that same doll smile crimped between her chin and her nose and that same calm whir coming from her eyes, but down inside of her she’s tense as steel” (Kesey 22). Not only does she run the mental hospital with precision, but she also inflicts terrible punishments on the patients who step out of line.
Nurse Ratched worked in the military as a nurse and now she runs the mental institute where Bromden and many other mental patients live. Although Nurse Ratched seems like she only tries to help the patients in their lives, she actually exists as the antagonist in the story because of her overbearing command and lack of mercy towards the